Treat Williams, the versatile actor who starred as a New York City neurosurgeon who moves his family to Colorado on the WB series Everwood and in such films as Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City and Milos Forman’s Hair, died Monday in a motorcycle accident. He was 71.
His agent, Barry McPherson of APA, confirmed Williams’ death in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. Earlier, he told People magazine that the actor “was killed this afternoon. He was making a left or a right [and] a car cut him off. I’m just devastated. He was the nicest guy. He was so talented.
“He was an actor’s actor. Filmmakers loved him. He’s been the heart of the Hollywood since the late 1970s. He was really proud of his performance this year. He’s been so happy with the work that I got him. He’s had a balanced career.”
Williams played Mick O’Brien on the Hallmark Channel series Chesapeake Shores from 2016-22 and has recurred as Lenny Ross on the CBS drama Blue Bloods since 2016 as well.
A heartthrob in his younger days, Williams portrayed the bad guy Xander Drax in The Phantom (1996), and his film résumé included turns in John Sturges’ The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Dead Heat (1988), Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) and Deep Rising (1998).
He was nominated for an Emmy in 1996 for playing agent Michael Ovitz in the HBO movie The Late Shift, about the battle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson.
Williams starred on all 89 episodes of the Greg Berlanti-created Everwood from 2002-06.
Richard Treat Williams was born on Dec. 1, 1951, in Stamford, Connecticut, and raised in nearby Rowayton. The house that he grew up in was owned by Judy Abbott, daughter of famed Broadway director George Abbott, and Bobby Griffith, who was Broadway producer Hal Prince’s creative partner, lived down the street.
“I had an idyllic childhood, but I didn’t initially realize how idyllic it truly was until I grew older,” he told Vermont magazine in an interview last year. “Our backyard was the Long Island Sound. My mother had a little sailing and swimming school. I taught at her school, and I used to race blue jay and lightning boats on the sound.”
He left home at age 14 to attend Kent School in Connecticut and gave up a spot on the football team in college to join the theater company at Franklin & Marshall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Judy Abbott was an agent at William Morris, and she would become his first agent.
Williams made his onscreen debut as a cop in the 1975 film Deadly Hero, directed by Ivan Nagy, then played a detective for Richard Lester in Terrence McNally’s hilarious The Ritz on the London stage and then in the 1976 film version.
Williams stepped in to play Danny Zuko in 1978 in the original Broadway production of Grease, and he kept the role for three years. A year later, he was memorable as George Berger in Hair (1979), based on the famed Broadway musical.
On his 12th audition for the film, Williams said he started to undress until he was naked at the end of a monologue. “They applauded, and I told them, ‘This is all that I’ve got, I don’t know what else I can give you,’” he recalled. “Milos came up to me after I walked out and told me that he was going to give me the part. That was the final audition.”
In Prince of the City (1981), Williams sparkled as narcotics detective Danny Ciello, who exposes corruption in the NYPD, and he took on the iconic role of Stanley Kowalski opposite Ann-Margret as Blanche Dubois in a 1984 ABC adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire.
He also worked on Broadway in Over Here, Once in a Lifetime, The Pirates of Penzance, Love Letters and Follies.
Survivors include his wife, Pam Van Sant, whom he married in 1988, and children Gill and Elinor.
Williams also was an avid pilot and skier who seemed to be enjoying the fact that things were slowing down for him as he worked on television.
“I like to think I’ve already proven myself on the ‘crazy meter’ and the ‘dramatic meter’ with Prince of the City or with Hair,” he said in the Vermont magazine piece. “If you’ve done those roles where you’ve gone the distance, why not just relax and know that you have the chance to do a two-page scene every third day?”